April retirement claims lower than expected, OPM says

April is the first month in 2012 in which actual claims filed were less than OPM’s projections.

OPM also overestimated the number of claims it would process in April. The projected number of processed claims was 8,300, while the agency actually processed 8,028.

However, OPM continued to make progress chipping away at a longstanding backlog of retirement claims. The agency finished April with a backlog of 51,016 claims to process — a 17 percent drop since the start of 2012. The personnel agency projects it will be able to cut its backlog in half by March of next year.